The goal of the Steam client project is a fully-featured Steam client running on Ubuntu 12.04. We’ve made good progress this year and now have the Steam client running on Ubuntu with all major features available. We’re still giving attention and effort to minor features but it’s a good experience at the moment. In the near future, we will be setting up an internal beta focusing on the auto-update experience and compatibility testing.

Since the Steam client isn’t much without a game, we’re also porting L4D2 to Ubuntu. This tests the game-related features of the Steam client, in addition to L4D2 gameplay on Ubuntu. Over the last few months, excellent progress has been made on several fronts and it now runs natively on Ubuntu 12.04. We’re working hard to improve the performance and have made good progress (more on that in a future post). Our goal is to have L4D2 performing under Linux as well as it performs under Windows.

Scottish Martial Arts wrote on Jul 17, 2012, 03:01:With all that in mind, it makes sense that serious computer users who also happen to be gamers would love to finally be free of Windows once and for all. It's not about fighting the power -- although maybe it is for some people -- it's about not being stuck with an inferior OS simply because you like to play games.

Linux looks like ass, is more difficult to use, barely supports games, has limited application support, has poor driver support, has a poor user experience, etc. To claim that it is superior to Windows is laughable. That's not to say it doesn't have many merits but if you want to do anything practical with your computer then that pretty much rules out Linux.

That said, I support any attempt to improve the gaming situation on Linux (and on Macs) and am glad that Valve is leading the way. Improving game support would diminish one of the main advantages that Windows currently has and can only help improve competition in the OS market.

First off, Linux is just the OS kernel.. it doesn't look like anything it just boots up the Operating system whether it's a GNU/FOSS distribution or Android.. It can look like anything you want there are plenty of nice looking Windows managers. It is superior to Windows in usability and functionality.. Ubuntu has made good strides of opening things up for the general user. It's different, but not necessarily hard to use. Also Linux for me is more of a office work and programming platform which if you need to get shit done you do it in Linux.. Honestly I don't really care if Linux becomes mainstream, I'll still use it as my Primary operating system like I have for the past 12 years.